They sounded like a garage band.

And I mean that as a compliment.

I was listening to Joe Elliott tell stories of hanging with Bono and Bowie, that his favorite song was “All The Young Dudes,” and then the band fired up and played “Ziggy Stardust.”

That’s not the track that remains, not the one that gets airplay. People focus on the later hits, especially from the MTV era, like “Let’s Dance.” But before Bowie turned into a young American, he explored the rock genre, and his apotheosis was the album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars,” which was much bigger in the U.K. than it was in the U.S., where Bowie didn’t really break through until “Rebel Rebel”

Bowie, T. Rex, Roxy Music, they were burgeoning in ’72 while America was still caught up in southern rock. It was a veritable hotbed of exploration I tell you.

And Joe Elliott was hooked. A dreamer. Who came up with the name “Deaf Leopard” before he had a band.

At first we wanted to be baseball players. Maybe a football/soccer player in England. And then the Beatles hit and we all wanted to be in bands. And this lasted a very long time, from the Beatles to the disco encroachment of the late seventies, to the rebirth on MTV until it became how you looked more than how well you played and the video outlet was no longer an AOR station.

Oh, there was a last gasp, with Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the indie scene, but by the mid-nineties, it was all over. It’s still over.

You didn’t need lessons, only three chords. G, D and A. And when Viv or Phil, it’s hard to tell on the radio, busted out a demonstration you knew the feeling, of power and distortion.

So they’re gonna play a cover of the aforementioned “Ziggy Stardust,” the title track. I’d have preferred “Moonage Daydream,” but it wasn’t my call.

And then…

The guitars wailed. That’s one thing a non-athletic person could do well, make a glorious sound with guitar and amp.

And then you realized, they sounded just like the album, but a little bit different. And Joe started to sing and he was a bit overpowered by the guitars and he was doing his best to sound like Bowie but he too was a little bit different and it took me back to…

The garage.

Or in my case, Marc’s basement. And Michael’s living room.

We all plugged in, and then we started to play.

We looked at others for the chords, for the changes. There was always someone better in the band than we were. But we locked on to songs. Of course the Beatles, but stuff easy to play, like “Gloria,” the Shadows of Knight version, not the Van Morrison/Them original.

And we were into gear. We knew the models. The same way you used to know what was inside your computer.

And we went to gigs not to hang with our friends and meet people, but to bask in the glorious sound coming from the stage.

It was a religion, I tell you.

You went to the record store. You saw all that you couldn’t buy. A purchase was not a casual decision.

And you played those records until you knew every lick by heart. You’d sit in front of the turntable and learn the licks. Maybe slow it down or speed it up so it was in tune with your guitar.

And you’d write down the chords to remember.

And you’d dream about the guitar you were gonna buy.

And then you discovered you weren’t quite good enough. Your gear gathered dust. But the music was still in you, you were still addicted. You did everything you could to get closer to it. Became a roadie, worked in a record store, maybe even at the label, not because you wanted to get rich, but because you wanted to be closer to the dope.

It ain’t that way anymore.

Suggested by reader Rich Madow, he writes:

Bands / artists that could not top their debut album, possibly to their detriment. These immediately come to mind:

Pretenders – Pretenders
Go Go’s – Beauty and The Beat
Alanis Morissette – Jagged Little Pill
Strokes – Is This It? (good question!!)
Moby Grape – Moby Grape
Violent Femmes – Violent Femmes
Yaz (Yazoo) – Upstairs At Eric’s

Tune in tomorrow, Tuesday March 26th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: LefsetzLive

“Leaving Neverland” is already old news. You know Michael Jackson’s handlers are aged boomers because they didn’t know you don’t fight back, you ignore it, and then people forget it.

In today’s “New York Times Magazine” there’s a letter from a fourteen year old complaining that the paper’s list of “The Top 25 Songs That Matter Right Now” contained songs she and her friends had never heard of, never mind listened to. Another writer said that too many had not hit the radio. And others championed the inclusion of Bruce Springsteen.

That’s the world we live in, one of chaos. Where the aged are addicted to the old and even youngsters are not comprehensive in their knowledge and experience.

The only way you can triumph is by having a continuing narrative. You can talk about albums all you want, but they don’t fit the modern paradigm, oftentimes they’re instantly forgotten. Kinda like Steve Perry’s comeback. He should have dropped single after single and maybe one of them would have been great and connected. Instead, he released a compendium of tunes that seemingly no one has listened to, and most people don’t even know he put out. Furthermore, if you’re in the marketplace on a regular basis you get feedback and figure out what works.

And Netflix succeeds not because of any individual show, but the tsunami of product, there’s always something new coming down the pike. Furthermore, almost everybody has a subscription so people can follow a suggestion, check something out and be part of the community, we all want to be part of the community.

Used to be in the pre-internet era there were self-anointed judges, who criticized your taste. You’re not listening to or watching the right stuff. Now, no one cares. The judges are on their own island stuck in the twentieth century. We’re all just trying to keep up, and oftentimes we don’t even find the great stuff for years. Who cares that someone is denigrating our consumption, no one else is aware of the criticism! Kinda like Twitter. Someone spews hate and then you check their number of followers, which is almost always low. And it being Twitter, most followers never see the tweet anyway, so you can ignore it.

But social media triumphs because we all have access and it’s free.

Meanwhile, the commentariat, the privileged, the wealthy, keep telling us to put our phones down and disconnect…they don’t realize, this is the ONLY way we connect, that in real life everybody’s pursuing their own dream in their silo and the only place everybody is in the town square is online. Ever try to schedule dinner or a playdate today? It’s an exercise in frustration, everybody’s BOOKED UP! But you can reach them in iMessage.

That’s the beauty of text, people respond.

They burned out e-mail, people get too much, they should ban cc.

Now one of the reasons politics dominates today is because of the continuous narrative. Trump writes a new story every day. And the oldsters can’t understand that time moves on. Yes, Trump was tweeting up a storm last Sunday, but that was LAST SUNDAY! Might as well have been 1962. It’s the cumulative effect that creates the lasting image. Just look at the right, over decades they’ve labeled Democrats as tax and spend, to the point even Democrats believe it!

As for Republicans glomming on and supporting Trump in his message… Independence was something the boomers were into that their children, the millennials, have rejected. The rewards come from being a member of the group, you don’t want to be isolated, outside. And on the internet, there are even groups for that! No one is alienated alone anymore, they can find their brethren online.

So we all have our interests and predilections. Oldsters are on Facebook, youngsters wouldn’t be caught dead there. Therefore, what happens on Snapchat and Instagram goes unseen on Facebook. And Zuckerberg wants to make Facebook even more private, adding to the lack of cohesiveness in society.

And everywhere you go, no one talks about music, there’s too much of it, we’re all listening to different stuff.

And since movies are about superheroes and you have to go to the theatre and pay to see them, many choose not to. Meanwhile, the industry and media keep trumpeting the success of said pictures that most people have never seen and don’t care about.

And a flick lasts a few weeks in the theatres and is gone. Every week there’s a new number one. Quick, name the hit movies of October and November! How about January? You can’t! Unless you’re a student of the game.

Kind of like baseball. Which used to start the first week of April and end the first week of October. Now it goes from March to November, satiating those who care, but for those who don’t… You mean I’m supposed to care in April, May, June and July? Wake me up in August, assuming I’m interested.

Baseball is not only no longer the national pastime, it’s certifiably NICHE!

While youngsters watch video game competitions on Twitch.

And some kids are on traveling soccer squads.

And every day there’s something new, that we’re supposed to pay attention to. How? We wouldn’t have a life of our own. And we’re addicted to the internet just trying to catch up. We foreswear connection every once in a while, but it only lasts twenty four hours and then we’re back in.

Steve Jobs’s presentations used to be mandatory viewing. Monday’s dog and pony show is for insiders only. Tim Cook is too boring and they haven’t introduced something exciting since…Steve Jobs was alive. Proving you can lose the plot. And smartphones are a commodity and we don’t need the latest one and…

Teenagers don’t get driver’s licenses and soon none of us will own cars.

But oldsters refuse to accept this. Oldsters always refuse to accept the present.

But the real story is the lack of traction of almost ANYTHING!

Theranos was last week’s story. “Finding Neverland” the week’s before.

And if you don’t get in early…

I can’t watch “Billions” or “Game of Thrones” because I’ve missed the previous seasons and I don’t have the time to catch up. I don’t have the time to live my life. And as big as “Game of Thrones” is, most people have never seen it. And have never heard Drake. And think Ariana Grande is something you order at Starbucks.

The internet made it almost frictionless to reach people, but they stopped paying attention, because they’re overwhelmed.

And those in the business of attention refuse to admit the game has changed. The studios make fewer movies of a single stripe. The labels put out hip-hop records only. Only TV is experimenting, but it took the AT&T merger to get HBO on today’s page. Why should I pay more than I am for Netflix for so little product?

It does come down to money.

But even more it comes down to time.

Money gets you through the door, isn’t that the essence of the college admission scandal?

But after you graduate, when you’re in the world, what do you want to do?

Oh, you’ve got choices, you might know.

But chances are the only person going there is you, along with a few friends.

Stars are not what they used to be, they don’t have the same ubiquity and their images have been tarnished for being revealed.

This is the world we live in. If you have any success, any following at all, be grateful. But know that growing that success bigger is an incredibly long haul, because you’re competing for attention with so many projects that you won’t even get a look, never mind be rejected.

And chances are if you’re trying to reach everybody, you’re too bland when everybody can drill down to exactly what they want.

This is where we are, and we are never going back. The internet allows things to be bigger than ever, but when it comes to entertainment, nothing has become that big. Will it stay that way? For a while anyway. But when someone tells you you’re a dodo for not knowing this or that, laugh in their face, and when you regain your composure, easily mention a bunch of stuff that they don’t know, and can’t even criticize because they’ve never experienced it.

We’re living in the Tower of Babel.

But we refuse to admit it.

We don’t know the same records, movies and TV shows, and we don’t even know the same slang!

It’s scary folks.

Have you been watching “Russian Doll”? If so you can give me your explanation of the ending, I’m still trying to figure it out.

And if you haven’t, it’s just a matter of time until you do, you see “Russian Doll” is this year’s “Stranger Things,” something that has built momentum sans media by early adopters who’ve brought along the curious, it’s all about the buzz I tell you. And I’m giving nothing away to say there’s a “Groundhog Day” construct, as in the main character, Nadia, keeps repeating the same day, after dying. And Natasha Lyonne as Nadia makes this whole series works, she’s so damn fine, proving once again that one person can carry a whole show, can make a difference, and the way she’s so independent, saying what she feels, is so ingratiating.

And when Nadia is reborn in the bathroom, the music that is played is Nilsson’s “Gotta Get Up.”

Nilsson was a songwriter who had worked in a bank and had sung the theme to “Midnight Cowboy” that he didn’t write and now had a huge hit with a Badfinger song that most people thought he did write. In between, he’d written the music to the children’s film “The Point,” the point being he had not been a star, but now he became one.

I got “Nilsson Schmilsson” as a premium, for subscribing to or renewing some magazine, maybe “Rolling Stone” when they still did this. It came all battered, which bugged me, I wanted my albums pristine, and the opening cut was “Gotta Get Up.”

Gotta get up, gotta get out, gotta get home before the morning comes

“Gotta Get Up” is a tear with a whole story, you’re carried away, it’s infectious. It’s not what you expected in 1972, when progressive music was breaking through and if it was more pop, it was more ignored.

And eventually, that summer “Coconut” infected the airwaves, a song kinda like “Baby Shark” that you could not get out of your mind. People would start singing it spontaneously for no reason whatsoever…”put the lime in the coconut.” DOCTOR! “Now let me get this straight…” It seemed a novelty song, but it was composed by a serious songwriter.

But it was the tracks that were not hits that truly got under your skin, that you were infected by.

“Gotta Get Up” was followed by “Driving Along,” which was upbeat and groovy, kinda like driving in your car with the windows down listening to the radio. It seemed like it was the next afternoon and the same guy who had to get up had done what he had to do, and was cruising.

But the piece-de-resistance was the third cut, “Early In The Morning.” This is the kind of track that made albums an art form. Never to be heard on the radio this music meant more to you than the hits. It sounded like early in the morning, with a bluesy feel, just Nilsson with some kind of keyboard. And I’ll tell you, oftentimes early in the morning I’ve got nothin’ but the blues too. I mean when I wake up too early. And the vocal gymnastics and the reference to himself creates a mood… A professional at his peak, with nothing but his talent on view, WHEW!

And “The Moonbeam Song” could have been straight off of “The Point.” Dreamy and childlike. Sounding completely different from what came before. It was soothing.

And the closer of the first side, “Down,” was pure bluesy rock, your body moved while you listened, this guy who seemed wimpy was nothing like that.

“Let The Good Times Roll” was a left field cover made completely Nilsson’s own.

“Jump Into The Fire” was heavy, it sounded like someone who got too close to the flame, it too rocked.

“I’ll Never Leave You,” the closing cut, seemed misplaced, kind of like “Good Night” on the White Album.

“Nilsson Schmilsson” sounded like nothing else. And since it had two big radio hits, people bought the album and listened to it. It’d be like hearing a big rap hit on the radio and finding the album contained Shostakovich.

But our tastes were broader back then.

Oh, for a moment there it seemed like kids were listening to everything, but hip-hop has now dominated.

And “Son of Schmilsson”, the follow-up, employed the same formula, but was not quite as good as what came before, but it contained the indelible “You’re Breakin’ My Heart,” which got ink, but no airplay, because of the profanity. Seen as huggable, Nilsson was not.

But, “Son of Schmilsson” did contain the near masterpiece “Spaceman,” which would have fit perfectly on “Nilsson Schmilsson.”

And then Harry met John Lennon, partied too hard, blew out his voice, and lost the plot and died before his time.

Now you cannot talk about this period of Nilsson’s work without crediting producer Richard Perry. Who was famous for slickness in an era that was rougher, but it succeeded, especially with Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” with its bass then guitar and piano intro that worked so well on the radio, you heard those bubbling notes and you got ready for the story.

And the Doors came back, and maybe Led Zeppelin never left.

But Harry Nilsson’s work was positively buried until someone plucked it for use in “Russian Doll,” where it not only fits so beautifully, but embeds itself into your brain to the point where it becomes a personal hit, you want more.

But there is none, if you were a fan.

But if you were not…

Gotta Get Up